Moby and the Void Pacific Choir - "Are You Lost in the World Like Me?" (Singles Going Steady)

This is the most soaring, urgent, and dramatic recording that Moby has done since "Extreme Ways", but now with an apocalyptic weight to it.

Adriane Pontecorvo: "Are You Lost in the World Like Me?" starts off as a noisy cry into space, filled with a yearning for something in the world to work like it's supposed to. It becomes an embrace, a sincere call across humanity for the fearful to come together. Driving, desperate, and vulnerable, this track never lets up, and would be almost perfect if not for Moby's signature fake strings peeking their outdated heads in at the end. Still, a synth-heavy stunner. [8/10]

Andrew Paschal: This is the most soaring, urgent, and dramatic recording that Moby has done since "Extreme Ways", but now with an apocalyptic weight to it. The four-note musical hook is potent and memorable, and gives the song its pop potential. At times the track tries to oversell itself, veering dangerously close in places to being so self-serious that it becomes a joke; I don't know that we needed propulsive electronics and electric guitar shredding, for instance. Still, more than anything else Moby comes across as one desperate to make himself heard, and he does a pretty convincing job in doing so. [7/10]

Paul Carr: PopMatters recent article on the retrospective merits of Moby's polarising Animal Rights seems particularly fitting when approaching his latest single. Most of us made our minds up about his work a long time ago. However, he still has the power to surprise. Here, he mixes his love of late '80s techno and house with the guitar sound which featured so prominently on the aforementioned album. It's a frantic, industrial, techno freakout with a euphoric choir enhanced chorus. If that sounds a bit nuts then, quite frankly, it is. [7/10]

Scott Zuppardo: One of the purveyors of EDM when it was still house music so there's a badge of some sort there. That said it's more of the same old idea, but the chorus adds to the allure. It will move folks on the dance floor but probably not even an ear hair of mine past this blurb. [4/10]

Chris Ingalls: The urgency is palpable and the sound is reminiscent of some obscure goth synth pop from the '80s -- not necessarily a bad thing. I like the anthemic quality of the track. Moby's relative absence from ubiquity over the past several years gives this song the impression of someone who's been out of touch for a while and has suddenly been shaken into reality, wondering what's happening to the world around him. 2016 is a fitting year for that kind of revelation and reflection. [7/10]

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.